As of right now, I have 8 live HC lvl 60s I've levelled this way, and a few dead ones as well. I also will have video demonstration of key points in the guide coming up sometime this week - have a bit of trouble with my movie maker right now.

Few disclaimers:*If you are reading this guide, I will ask you not to share the guide (or the tactics used in it) with others.
Yes, I know it's already in the open, but I would prefer if it gains as little exposure as possible. While I do want the HC community to thrive, and I do want to help people who lost a character recently (to lag, crash, bad luck, etc) and got discouraged to get back on their feet... I am also not a good samaritan. I want to share with the people I like, which includes everyone I've met on this Hardcore Forum, but, of course, not as everyone I've met in game or on the official forums, or elsewhere. None of the knowledge in this guide is particularly secret, it's more of a matter of systematizing and popularizing it that matters. And I think we can agree that we don't want it too popular

*No exploits are employed throughout, however, I will be exploiting (in the softer sense of the word) a few things that Diablo 3 makes easy: experience stacking, instance resets, act bypass and key area/mob grinding.

*This is going to make the game boring. Seriously, if you want to have fun levelling, do it the normal way, solo, with friends, or pubs. This guide is for those who strictly want to get to Inferno quickly (where the supposedly more fun awaits)

*This is not for fresh HC lvl 1s. This guide assumes you've been to lvl 60 before, and generated enough funds or twinking gear to make this playthrough quick and relatively painless.

*This is a solo guide. We will employ a friend/relative/second account for waypoints only, not actual killing. A true rushing/powerlevelling would have you follow a beefy lvl 60, but this costs someones's time, and money.

*The "under 7 hours" promise is not strictly true (the game only records game time, not menu time). We will also spend a bit of time in the menus and checking AH. Still, even my record of 6:46 can be improved. I waste plenty of time staring at the stash and sometimes not grinding too effectively. So all in all, there are things to consider on either side.

1. Requirements
a) We're going to need a bit of gold. I'd say 1 million is a good start, but the more the better.
If you’re on a tight budget, the majority of this can be done with as little as 250k. If you want to speed things up in the lvl 40-60 portion, you’re going to need a good bit for a solid lvl 60 weapon with reduced level requirement. Remember, you can sell back the gear you bought, so consider it an investment, not an expense!
b) Friends. You will need a few of those on your list, because you’ll have to bother them periodically to give you certain WPs. No worries, not too often. Just don’t become annoying. That’s why you’re going to need several friends. I would ask a single friend for 1 waypoint per 3 days, at the most. It takes only a few seconds to create a game, but it is a bit distracting. Of course, you can also trade favors, or buy WPs on the forums, typically for 5-10k.
c) Optional: have a secondary account close by. My spouse has an account with a character that has every WP open up to end of A1 inferno. This makes things a lot easier for me, but by no means mandatory.
d) Ideally, you’ll also want some knowledge of the class you’re speedrunning with, if you haven’t played it before. Personally, I’ve lost a lvl 40 DH and a lvl 28 Wizard because it was my first time playing them and I simply hadn’t figured out the class limitations, and the encounters that would be trivial for my barbs ended up being deadly to them.

2. Preparations
a) Have a plan of skills you’re going to use. We’re going to be grinding lots of soft mobs, and face an elite regularly, so a good balance of quick AOE and nukes are going to be needed. Lots of the time the boss will be too powerful for normal characters, but since we will reset instances often, the cooldowns will be ready every time! What does this mean? A WOTB/EQ combo takes up 2 slots and isn’t very efficient for normal grinding with 2 min cooldowns, but what if we reset the cooldown every 1 min instead? You’ll also want a faster travel skill. Lastly, you will be speedrunning. This means going headfirst into danger. O-crap skill!
Here’s what worked for me. I'm not going to provide builds, just list skills. This is because there is no single build throughout the game, you will need to adapt to each section of the run.
Barb: Cleave with Rupture; Furious Charge with Merciless Assault; WOTB or Quake or both; Ignore Pain; Sprint with Marathon; Leap with Iron Impact. Mix and match as needed depending on situations (I’ll go into more details later on)
Monk: Crippling Wave with Mangle; Fleetfooted, Tempest Rush with speed; Blind, Heal, Invincibility and a Mantra of your choice.
DH: Bolos or Hungering; Rapid Fire or Elemental; full discipline selection for 1-4.
Wizard: Shock with Explosive Bolts; Arcane Orb; Crysal Shell; Nova; Archon Form
Passive don’t matter much for this. Compensate where you feel the need.
b) Get your speedrun gear. You don’t need it all at once, but I like to have it ready in my stash, sorted by level so I can quickly pick out what I need.
Here are the points of major upgrades:
Level 1: Vendor weapon
3: 12+ dps
6: IAS, damage rings
8: 16+ dps
10: full set of stat/vita/exp in every slot
15: 45+ dps socketed weapon with a flawless square ruby or better
16: Broken crown socketed with a ruby
25: 50+ dps socketed, with high stat/vita/exp
30-31: 65+ dps socketed
25-40: armor with high stat/vita/exp
38: 100+ dps socketed
42-46: 250+ lvl 60 weapon with reduced level
42: Aughild’s Helm socketed with highest ruby you can get
46-50: Better anything
54: better anything
55+: Doesn’t really matter, at this point just use what you have, but if you have upgrades that’s good too

The difficult one here is the reduced level, lvl 60 weapon. These can cost millions, but if you’re lucky you can snipe one off cheap. If not, not too big of a deal, even a 250 will suffice. Later, you can buy a higher dps one, because they get cheaper as the reduced level gap gets closer to 60. For example a 500+ dps 200+ vita lvl 42 like the one I use can cost a few millions. Same stats on a lvl 50 will probably be under 1m. Once again, remember, this isn’t an expense, but an investment. These weapons sell very well. I’d stay away from 2handers though. You’re going to be a bit fragile, so a shield is preferred. Unless you’re DH, in which case you might as well get a 2h+quiver (I bought a great blue ilvl 44 2h xbow (I believe 450 dps) for around 400k).

3. Normal (1-30)
And we’re out of the gates. At low levels quest experience is king, so that’s what we’ll be doing.
*Get to town and buy a blue weapon from a vendor
*Complete the Wretched Mother quest, you should be level 3 and ready to use the first of your twink gear
*Complete the quests all the way to finding cemetery, you should be level 6 and doubling your dps with those ias/dmg rings I told you about (they cost peanuts on AH)
*At this point you can either:
A) complete all of A1, twinking as you go. This should give you lvl 15 by the end of it
B) have a new game open at Cursed Hold subquest. From here on, run to Festing Woods -> Crypt of the Ancients, and grind it until lvl 12. Then complete the Cursed Hold/Butcher 1.5 times, and you will be 15. Note, this is the riskier option, but a bit quicker.
*At level 15 equip your ruby-socketed weapon. You will be doing insane damage, but remember, you’re still squishy!
*Have a game open at Act2 -> Black Soulstone/Chamber. If you can’t get a game there, just quest through A2, it’s very quick either way
*Find Vault of the Assassin (dungeon just past the last set of sewers)
*Grind it until 20. At 16, don’t forget to equip your Broken Crown socketed with a ruby, or another good + exp socketed helm. This speeds up the exp gains quickly.
*There is typically one HUGE crowd of skeletons in VoA. Don’t restart the dungeon until you find and kill it.
*Don’t waste time chasing runners. Just go to your next big pack of mobs. Sprint/Vault/Tempest Rush until you’re out of resources. For monks, the 250 spirit pool helps, for DHs, don’t forget preparation.
*At 20, have a game open at Azmodan (final quest). A slightly earlier one works too, doesn’t matter much.
*Go to Arreat Crater 1 and grind away. You’re looking for the scorp packs, and ideally you’ll want to skip the bosses/single mobs. This isn’t a safe thing to do at 20, but you can start skipping around 25.
*At 30, have a game open at Normal Diablo. If your friend is kind, have them kill it for you (as well as NM Diablo right after, if they are VERY kind). Don’t forget to return the favor. Or just kill it yourself, very easy to stun lock.

4. Nightmare (31-50)
*Things will get a bit harder here. If you feel like you’re not twinked enough, stay back in the earlier areas. Around 33 everything in A1 will be trivial.
*Open a game at Cursed Hold
*Run to Festering-Crypt of the Ancients
*This will take some time and is probably most boring portion of the run
*You can get the 100+ dps weapon at 38, but try and buy a good one as early as possible.
*Grind Crypt, watch out for the boss that spawns here (I recommend nuking it, or running out on bad mods, though I haven’t had to run out more than once or twice).
*At 40, a lot of twink upgrades should be open for you
*Open a game in A2-Soulstone Chamber, once again find VoA (note, the desert with VoA is quite dangerous in between lacuni, accursed and bees).
*Grind VoA until 42-45 or whenever your Reduced Level weapon upgrade opens
*Watch out for Guardians (spider like casters). They can destroy you FAST.
*I recommend putting on Aughild Helm with your class stats (or high vita), socketed with a high ruby (I use a 25% one). This is a very good levelling helm that can last a long time.
*Once your lvl 60 weapon is in your hand, have a game open at NM Azmodan or near there.
*Hit up Arreat 1 until 50, once again seeking out scorp packs.
*I don’t recommend Arreat 2 or Core because of succubi and the phasebeasts.
*At 50 put on the last of your twink armor, open a game at NM Diablo and kill it (or have a friend kill it, once again very easy for twinks)

5. Hell (51-60)
*Hell is either a joke or quite hard, depending on how good your lvl 60 RLR weapon is. Around 500 dps with good stats, it should be a joke. If you’re stuck with a 250, it will be pretty stressful.
*Once again, start a game with Festering (you can get Leah if you want), Crypt of the Ancients. 3 affix boss in there will be just a normal skeleton, very easy to nuke down unless it’s a shielder. High/fast AOE skills are awesome here: Ball lightning, Merciless Assault, Sweeping Wind + Cripping, etc.
*You can stay here until as late as 57, or just 54, depending on how comfortable you feel about hitting the final stretch
*At 54-57, have a game open at first quest of A3
*Enter the Light the Beacons rampart, and grind it until the first boss. When you see a boss, run back out and restart. You can try and take a boss, but chances are it won’t end well, or simply take too long
*You can grind with fast restarts (e.g. barb leap to first pack, stomp and quake, leap out), or take your time to clear the whole section of the rampart (works well with monk and DH). Either way takes about same time, except fast restarts may get you locked out (Invalid Input error). It’s also less boring if you clear more. At this point, it should take 15-20 min per level, so 1-2 hours to 60.
*At 60, drop off your exp gear and get geared for Inferno!

6. Conclusions
Few more things.
*Don’t feel like you HAVE to get the perfect exp/stat/vita gear. You really don’t. My DH had barely any bonus exp except Aughild’s. Remember, if you can get high stat/vita gear, you can kill faster and safer… which in the end works out to more exp/hour. But ideally, you want both high stats AND high bonus exp, of course. This costs more, obviously.
*Barb is probably the safest and easiest to run this with, but every class is possible.
*The time you save levelling is the time you can spend MFing at 60 to compensate for money spent on levelling!
*Remember, if it’s not fun, it’s not worth doing. Don’t burn out grinding the bloody Crypt of the bloody Ancients. You can leave one character and go play another (also speed run in another area, or play the normal way) in the meantime, which is what I do when I’m bored.
*Play to beat a record! I’ve set out to make a video running to 60 in under 7 hours, but I went over for a bit. I did however beat the 7 hours mark on my next barb. The challenge was worthwhile.
*Think of ways to improve! The 6-15 section is a bit of a drag, same with 30-40 but I haven’t found a way to improve those. Let me know, online or on the forums, if you find better ways to speedlevel!

Awesome guide Alex! For what is worth, thanks a lot! One doubt though (I don't have D3 to play right now): "Light the Beacons rampart, and grind it until the first boss". What is this?

Also, could you suggest good builds for Monk and WD, my low level chars still and that would need to run this guide?

Cheers

Click to expand...

Not really sure about WD - I've been playing it the normal way slowly for fun, and playing straight summoner with TOAD OF HUGENESS for the comic effect It's not very good, just fun.
For Monk, I liked Crippling+Mangle, quick Tempest, Heal, Blind, Invincibility and the dmg Mantra.
Something like this: http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/monk#WcYXgk!ZbX!aZaba

The rampart I'm talking about is the first area you enter, when on the quest "Light the Beacons".
You want to grind the area up until the first Elite you encounter because you can't really beat A3 elites at lvl 54. So after you see the elite (it may be very close to the entrance, or further away), you run back out, or TP out

I lost my only HC 60 a few days ago, and was able to get a reroll up to 60 in short order farming a lot of the same areas you suggested.

What I found most helpful -- and what your guide highlights -- are the areas with (1) little risk and (2) tons of enemies in a relatively small space. Low risk spots have few or no elite packs and easily accessible waypoints or exits. I re-ran low-risk zones because I wanted to avoid wasting gold on incremental upgrades on the way to 60 so I could save more for my 60+ gear. This made me slightly squishier than your average overgeared, overleveled HC character, so limiting the number of elites I had to face and making sure I had an escape hatch handy was important.

Killing many enemies quickly is obviously helpful. But I found it particularly useful to chain kill large groups of slow, low health enemies. This gave me three sources of XP: (1) XP from killing the mobs, multiplied by my helm ruby and benefiting from my +XP gear; (2) bonus XP from killing multiple enemies in one hit; and, most importantly, (3) bonus "massacre" XP for chain-killing 15+ enemies. Killing 30+ enemies can often net you 3000-4000 extra XP, and while that doesn't seem like very much, combined with the other XP sources and all your modifiers, it fills up the bars very quickly.

One note about chain killing: your massacre streak will stay alive as long as you are hitting even a single enemy. You tend to lose it when you've quickly cleared everything in your immediate area and have a long run to the next enemy, so having high move speed or the ability to teleport / leap / vault to a new group of enemies is ideal. As a barb, I found using Sprint and Whirlwind most useful.

You mentioned some great chain killing areas. I'll elaborate on some of my favorites in Act I:

(1) Leoric's Manor: Halls of Agony can be pretty tough if you're gearing for XP and trying to save money, so this is a helpful, low-risk spot right before Halls. Advance until you get the waypoint for Leoric's Manor. Ordinarily, you'd be coming in the front of the Manor, from the Manor Grounds, and a large group of cultists and a handful of demons would pour down the stairs and rush the front entrance of the Manor. Very fun to kill. But after you've cleared it the first time, when you use the waypoint you're actually running that sequence in reverse.

On an ideal spawn, you'd run up the back stairs to the balcony, past the first small square room and into the second room that has a lectern. At this point, cultists will start running into the lectern room. Your job is to kill a few and move past them to aggro the rest of the cultists and demons on the stairs. Run / leap / vault / teleport down the stairs and massacre the 30-45 enemies there, and work your way back up the stairs. Helpfully, if any of the first wave of enemies got past you on your way down the stairs, they will likely aggro back down the stairs toward you.

Once you finish the group (I usually easily caught 25-45), take a 5 second town portal, leave game, restart game. Rinse and repeat.

The Manor is very low risk, but every once in a while two things will happen that can make the gambit slightly risky for an undergeared player: a unique boss will spawn, usually in the balcony room, or an elite pack of cultists will spawn, usually downstairs by the Manor front entrance or in one of the rooms downstairs.

Happily the layout of the Manor makes it extremely easy to escape. If you see an elite pack at the start of the run, simply leap / teleport off the balcony directly onto the waypoint, head to Tristram, and restart. If you see a pack at the bottom of the stairs, they are almost always blocked from coming up by the 30+ enemies that spawn there; I would kill as many normal enemies as I felt I safely could, then leap / teleport from the balcony to restart.

Alternatively, if you're better geared, you can just kill them and add to your XP. Having a boss mob there means your massacre streak will almost never drop, and as you whittle away the boss, the rest of the mobs should aggro in to be picked off in the crossfire.

(2) Crypt of the Ancient (and/or Warrior's Rest): As you mentioned, Crypt is a great spot. I would load in on the quest "Talk to Alaric," waypoint to Drowned Temple, and run to the Crypt. Once inside, you'll get a checkpoint, and you'll use that checkpoint to re-run the area.

Chain killing is very easy here because of the 3-4 packs of skeletons nicely spread out through the upper and lower level, and the summoners that keep a steady stream of skeletons spawning between packs to help bridge that gap between enemies. You can very easily get streaks of 45-70 in Crypt.

The only risk is the guaranteed elite skeleton pack. It's possible to end up with an illusionist arcane vortex pack, or something similar, that can be a real nightmare for an undergeared leveler. Because of that risk, I ended up abandoning Crypt for Leoric's Manor once in Hell.

Warrior's Rest works the same way with fewer enemies and a perhaps heightened risk because of the narrow space.

(3) Cemetery of the Forsaken: A solid early run, mainly for the events that spawn in the crypts. Jar of Souls can net you a nice 80+ kill streak, plus significant bonus event XP. The other event -- whose name I can't remember -- with the three urns can get you a streak of 45+, and excellent bonus event XP. On the urn event, after you speak to the quest giver spirit, trigger all three urns so skeletons spawn from all locations (only one "boss" spirit spawns) and let the skeletons enter the middle of the large central room to aid in chain killing.

There's certainly some risk of encountering a tough pack in the crypts, but as it's very early in the Act, enemies tend not to be that tough. Always make sure you have a clear line to the crypt entrance.

Wife and good friend lost their lvl 60 wizard and DH (respectively). They are back up to the 40's with new rolls and this info should make the last stretch a bit less painless.

Cheers!

Edit: It's sort of common sense, but if you've accumulated some +34 stat gems, low level gear with sockets becomes a great source of vit and primary stat. Particularly pants/chest with 2 and 3 sockets at lowish levels.

Wife and good friend lost their lvl 60 wizard and DH (respectively). They are back up to the 40's with new rolls and this info should make the last stretch a bit less painless.

Cheers!

Edit: It's sort of common sense, but if you've accumulated some +34 stat gems, low level gear with sockets becomes a great source of vit and primary stat. Particularly pants/chest with 2 and 3 sockets at lowish levels.

Great guide, I wish you would have written it up earlier. It took me until my third hc lvl 60 to figure out how useful +exp gear was.

For Witch Doctor you pretty much want to roll with Poison Dart (Splinters) and Firebats (Dire Bats) on offense. Dire Bats are mana intensive but with socketed weapons you will mowing down whites with one blast anyway, and the Splinters are there to mop up bigger enemies. Spirit Walk (Jaunt) and Horrify (any) are your o**** buttons. For the last two skills I would run with Soul Harvest (Siphon early, Soul to Waste late) and Grasp of the Dead (Unbreakable Grasp).

Honorable mention goes to Locust Swarm (Pestilence or Devouring Swarm), which can let you kill entire hordes of whites without stopping. Get some fast boots and its crazy how quickly you can clear the craters with only a few casts of Locust Swarm along the way.

Great guide, I wish you would have written it up earlier. It took me until my third hc lvl 60 to figure out how useful +exp gear was.

For Witch Doctor you pretty much want to roll with Poison Dart (Splinters) and Firebats (Dire Bats) on offense. Dire Bats are mana intensive but with socketed weapons you will mowing down whites with one blast anyway, and the Splinters are there to mop up bigger enemies. Spirit Walk (Jaunt) and Horrify (any) are your o**** buttons. For the last two skills I would run with Soul Harvest (Siphon early, Soul to Waste late) and Grasp of the Dead (Unbreakable Grasp).

Honorable mention goes to Locust Swarm (Pestilence or Devouring Swarm), which can let you kill entire hordes of whites without stopping. Get some fast boots and its crazy how quickly you can clear the craters with only a few casts of Locust Swarm along the way.